It doesn't mean that at all. If you see a friend on the street and you recognize each other simultaneously and both spontaneously smile - is there a smile traveling through space between you?

Two unrelated events, except for the recognition which involves traveling photons and brain activity.

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I'm saying that light doesn't travel - it's a simultaneous, instantaneous, shared communication among material objects. Not that this communication doesn't take time to be accomplished over large distances but that's not necessarily due to the inertia of having to be physically transported

Well, at least something needs to travel, doesn't it? In your case it is "communication". Except that you dismiss that we can measure and analyze light. What is it that we measure then? You know that we can measure and count photons, right?

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- that could be proportionally related to increasingly low probability of a signal handshake, or else a proportional seek time to source a common memory closer to the Big Bang, or a combination, or something else. It's an information process of object locations communicating, not a physical process of transportation. That's the idea anyhow.

Blablabla. Wild, senseless speculation, not based on research, nor measurement. Your observations are again scientifically meaningless.

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"Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal."

Two unrelated events, except for the recognition which involves traveling photons and brain activity.

I'm using the example as a model or metaphor, not as a literal explanation. On the level which we are consciously aware, we have no experience of any kind projectile being fired between people's faces to accomplish recognition.

We know that a single electron doesn't travel down the length of a wire, it's passed from atom to atom. I have not seen any evidence that there are a such thing as photons or that they travel through space. As far as I can tell, it could just as easily be atoms detecting and imitating one another in an orderly fashion, rather than massless intangible particle-waves transacting in a vacuum.

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Well, at least something needs to travel, doesn't it?

No, I don't think it does. Does light look like it travels to you or does it look like you are seeing it right where it is? As living members of the cosmos, are we not obligated to consider our own direct experience of phenomena as a factor in explaining that experience? Not to say that everything actually how it seems to us, but I would say that quite a bit can be explained better though first hand observation. It should not be disqualified.

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In your case it is "communication". Except that you dismiss that we can measure and analyze light. What is it that we measure then?

We measure the behavior of the materials which we are using to do the experiment and their interactions with each other. Light doesn't have to physically leave the atom doesn't mean it can't be measured, understood, and predicted as if it did.

Yes. I probably know most of the same things that you know about photons, I'm just interpreting that knowledge a different way. I see photons as quantum events within matter, as ideas are electromagnetic events within a living cortex.

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Blablabla. Wild, senseless speculation, not based on research, nor measurement. Your observations are again scientifically meaningless.

Sorry, yet some more discussion, because I just can't stand your never ending stupidity.

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"That which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe."- John Archibald Wheeler

Light does travel. That's why we know the SPEED at which light travels across the vacuum of the universe and through different materials like glass, water, air etc

We only know how long it takes distant sources to detect each other. The speed in a vacuum is c - which really means instantaneous as far as the cosmos is able to produce any phenomenon separated by that much distance. It doesn't prove light traveling in a physical form between particles. A photon is inconceivable. It's like a square circle. You can talk about it, and give it a name, but you can't really imagine what it actually is in any kind of tangible way.

What we see in different physical mediums is a measure of the properties of that substance and how it treats the inhibition or amplification of the qualities being communicated.

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"That which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe."- John Archibald Wheeler

We only know how long it takes distant sources to detect each other. The speed in a vacuum is c - which really means instantaneous as far as the cosmos is able to produce any phenomenon separated by that much distance. It doesn't prove light traveling in a physical form between particles. A photon is inconceivable. It's like a square circle. You can talk about it, and give it a name, but you can't really imagine what it actually is in any kind of tangible way.

What we see in different physical mediums is a measure of the properties of that substance and how it treats the inhibition or amplification of the qualities being communicated.

IIRC there was an experiment proving protons. Basically there were two lasers colliding and you could literally see tiny red thingies in the place where they were hitting each other which, according to the guy conducting the experiment, were photons

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My names are many, yet I am One.-Orion, son of Fire and Light, Sol Invictus.

What else is meaning about? What is your original comment referring to specifically as meaning?

You brought up "meaning".

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It is in response to a real problem. The failures of QM to support a coherent cosmology with the possibility of order, life, and consciousness. The Uncertainty Principle and Observer Effect are real problems. Huge.

I've studied a hell of a lot of QM, but I must have missed the part where life is impossible. Also, uncertainty ect. aren't problems--they are results. They are only problems if you have a preconceived notion that reality should not be that way.

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Then please explain how QM evolved before it.

It started with Max Planck trying to explain black body radiation. An early model he proposed failed experimentally, so he added quantization of energy to fix the problem and the new model worked. The oddities that people associate with QM were first mathematically predicted as consequences of Planck's law.

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Who cares? Lots of people believe stupid things.

Except you, apparently.

The point was that finding people who believe stupid things does not makethem any more likely to be real. What counts is evidence.

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Do you deem life and human consciousness useless and not scientific?

No, you have admitted your posts on the matter were useless and not scientific.

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If we are honest—and scientists have to be—we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. — Paul Dirac

We know that a single electron doesn't travel down the length of a wire, it's passed from atom to atom.

True. That's why the light speed in a wire is lower than the light speed in a vacuum.

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I have not seen any evidence that there are a such thing as photons or that they travel through space.

Light is emitted by sources and exists in the form of electromagnetic waves, or photons. Even though the latter is the name for the quantitzed elements that we measure when absorbed. It doesn't matter. What matters is, light somehow bridges the gap in a vacuum between object A and measurement device B. This exactly coincidences with our definition of travel. Somehow denying this, and coming with some absurd philosophical point of view that this doesn't include traveling is absurd. What you can doubt, which is even part of relativity, is that any time passes from the frame of reference of the 'photon'. Because there doesn't. But that's not the discussion right now, the one thing that is clear is that light travels. How else, could light be bended by a gravitational field?

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As far as I can tell, it could just as easily be atoms detecting and imitating one another in an orderly fashion, rather than massless intangible particle-waves transacting in a vacuum.

In a vacuum there are no atoms. And if I follow you in your ridiculous standpoint, what you call "detecting one another" is called light, and this needs to bridge an amount of space, which is what we call travel.

Denying obvious real world results is a serious symptom of crankyness. Not that you will ever admit this, even to yourself.

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Does light look like it travels to you or does it look like you are seeing it right where it is?

Measurements show it starts and point A and can detected at point B. We call this phenomenon "movement".

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As living members of the cosmos, are we not obligated to consider our own direct experience of phenomena as a factor in explaining that experience?

No. Our experience is a separate phenomenon.

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Not to say that everything actually how it seems to us, but I would say that quite a bit can be explained better though first hand observation. It should not be disqualified.

Human observation or experience isn't disqualified. It is a separate phenomenon that is studied in a separate field, called psychology. There is no need whatsoever to connect two totally unrelated phenomena. Our bodily detection and interpretation devices are not fundamentally different from the mechanical ones that we created.

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We measure the behavior of the materials which we are using to do the experiment and their interactions with each other. Light doesn't have to physically leave the atom doesn't mean it can't be measured, understood, and predicted as if it did.

Maybe nothing happens or exist at all, and we are connected to some sort of super computer that just make it 'as if' things are happening while physically they are not. Might be true, probably isn't. It's just another unprovable crackpot theory.

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Yes. I probably know most of the same things that you know about photons, I'm just interpreting that knowledge a different way.

Yes, in a totally nonsensical way, not related to science nor reality.

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I see photons as quantum events within matter

Here you prove you don't know that photons are matter and both are forms of energy.

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Blablabla. Wild, senseless speculation, not based on research, nor measurement. Your observations are again scientifically meaningless.

Sorry, yet some more discussion, because I just can't stand your never ending stupidity.

Striping it doesn't make it any less true. Not my problem if you don't like those observations.

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"Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal."

We only know how long it takes distant sources to detect each other. The speed in a vacuum is c - which really means instantaneous as far as the cosmos is able to produce any phenomenon separated by that much distance. It doesn't prove light traveling in a physical form between particles. A photon is inconceivable. It's like a square circle. You can talk about it, and give it a name, but you can't really imagine what it actually is in any kind of tangible way.

What we see in different physical mediums is a measure of the properties of that substance and how it treats the inhibition or amplification of the qualities being communicated.

IIRC there was an experiment proving protons. Basically there were two lasers colliding and you could literally see tiny red thingies in the place where they were hitting each other which, according to the guy conducting the experiment, were photons

Technically this is true since there's no such thing as time at the speed of light. At the speed of light, light always travels from A to B instantaneously.

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Quote from: George Bernard Shaw

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one

Light does travel. That's why we know the SPEED at which light travels across the vacuum of the universe and through different materials like glass, water, air etc

We only know how long it takes distant sources to detect each other. The speed in a vacuum is c - which really means instantaneous as far as the cosmos is able to produce any phenomenon separated by that much distance. It doesn't prove light traveling in a physical form between particles. A photon is inconceivable. It's like a square circle. You can talk about it, and give it a name, but you can't really imagine what it actually is in any kind of tangible way.

What we see in different physical mediums is a measure of the properties of that substance and how it treats the inhibition or amplification of the qualities being communicated.

When I was about 13 (over 40 years ago) we did a simple physics experiment which showed how by moving a magnet inside a coiled wire one could produce an electric current. We also showed that an electric current through coiled wire could produce and electromagnetic field.

It was then explained to us that that is how electromagnetic waves (like light) TRAVEL through space. i.e a moving magnetic field creates an electric current which in turn creates another magnetic field slightly further away than the first magnetic field.

This explanation may be flawed but it seems intuitively better than your theory of all particle being aware of each other.

Also if photons do not travel how do you explain gravitational lensing?

Technically this is true since there's no such thing as time at the speed of light. At the speed of light, light always travels from A to B instantaneously.

No, it travels at 3000000 kilometers per second[1] from A to B. Even if A and B are only a micron apart, it still takes a very short amount of timeIf it were instantaneous, it wouldn't make any sense in talking about "speed of light". If it's so instantaneous, how do you explain people slowing down light?[2] Or black holes distorting and absorbing light[3] instead of it just continuing on with its path instantaneously? And the fact that black holes can even distort light, due to their massive gravity, proves that light has some mass, even if only a very small amount

Str82hell is correct. At the speed of light, light always travels from A to B instantaneously.

You misread him, Blaziken. He wasn't claiming that light travelled instantaneously when viewed from a reference frame that is not travelling at c, but that it travels instantaneously from a reference frame that is itself travelling at c. Do the math.

You misread him, Blaziken. He wasn't claiming that light travelled instantaneously when viewed from a reference frame that is not travelling at c, but that it travels instantaneously from a reference frame that is itself travelling at c. Do the math.

I understand what you're saying but I don't understand how that's correctMind explaining it to me?

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My names are many, yet I am One.-Orion, son of Fire and Light, Sol Invictus.

Lets say at some point in space called "A" we have some sort of event thatgenerates a photon. Some time later (no faster than distance/c) a photoncollides with something (maybe our detector) at point B. Whenever we measurethis sort of thing, we find that the total energy in the system at point A drops byexactly the same amount of energy that arrives at point B. If we assume a forcecarrying particle traveled from A to B, this makes perfect sense.

Now lets turn to your view where the particle at B just senses the event at Aand imitates A:

How does A know when to start acting like it has a lower energy state, andHow does B know when to start acting like it has a higher energy state?

Does B have to transmit information back to A to let it know it was detected?If that is the case, doesn't that make the speed of the information exchange at least twice the speed of light?

But wait. What if a particle at C senses the event at A as well. Do B and Cnegotiate to detect where the energy shows up? How long does that take? Do they have to come to an agreement before they let A know, or to theyboth let A know they are willing to take the energy and let A pick who gets it?If that is the case, doesn't A need to communicate the fact back to B that it wins and C that it looses? What if B and C are on opposite sides of the universe?clearly this communication would need to take place much faster than c. If this information can be exchanged much faster than c, what is so special aboutc anyway? Why is it never exceeded?

Of course that is ridiculous. It could take billions of years for another particleto decide to imitate the particle at A, and we have never seen any indication thatA will wait to drop in energy state. So, A drops to a low energy state right away, does that solve anything? Nope. In reality, the energy could show up inthe form of a collision with almost any other particle in the universe, so B, C, and countless billions of other particles would need to be chattering back andforth to decide what to do with the energy.

This gets interesting... Not just any point can take the energy. It is only ever taken at a point that is distance * c away from point A. It's like a three dimensionversion of a stone dropped in a pond. You can picture a ring propagating away frompoint A at the speed of light, and only particles in that ring may take the energy.

So in a time t = distance divided by c, all the particles in a sphere of circumference 2 * pi * c * t need to finish their negotiation and pick one to take the energy or pass to the next ring. But, if they take the energy, they still have to pass on theinformation to the next ring, so none of them decide to take it too.

We also have the little problem that not any particle in a ring can take the energy.Some may be in the shadow of a particle in an earlier ring. Considering most particlesare in motion with respect to each other, that would require that every particle in a ringknow the position and velocity of a vast number of particles in every inner ring and calculate where all the shadows will fall to verify that it isn't moving into the shadow.

Clearly this new view would take a shitload of communication and calculation to sort outwho gets the energy. That leaves me wondering: Where does all the energy for thatcommunication come from? How come we aren't missing any?

Your view mandates an undetected energy source that powers superluminal communicationbetween particles and all sorts of other effects that have never been seen.

Now back to science...

Since even your view suggests that a wave of some sort must propagate through spacecarrying information, isn't the idea of the photon a lot simpler?

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If we are honest—and scientists have to be—we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. — Paul Dirac

I don't entirely get what you're trying to say, but information doesn't always need to be transmitted in all directions.

@blaziken: The theory of relativity (I don't know whether it's the special or general theory) states that from the perspective of a certain frame it's impossible to know whether that frame is moving or things outside that frame are moving. For example, when you're driving a car, you technically can't know whether you or the car is moving. If you're driving west on the equator with the speed of the circumference of the earth divided by 24 hours, you may seem to be driving very fast, but you're actually standing still and the earth is moving under you. This is also true for a photon. A photon, travelling at the speed of light, can't know whether it is standing still or not. Now comes the funny part; the speed of light, c, is the fastest speed possible (I don't know whether this follows from relativity or v.v., but both are true), but a photon travelling at the speed of light can't know whether it is moving or standing still. This means that, when the photon is carrying a gun, it could fire a bullet in any direction and should see it travelling with a speed of, let's say, 1000 metres a second, no matter which direction it is fired. This means that when the photon is firing the bullet in the direction it is travelling, the bullet is exceeding the speed of light, which is impossible. If this wouldn't happen, the photon would know that it already reached the speed of light and it would have reached certainty about it's speed, which is impossible as well. v=(v1+v2)/(1+(v1*v2)/(c^2)) is a result of this problem. It also has many other specifications, such as that space is decreasing and time is slowing down (which is actually the same).

Wikipedia says the mass of a photon is 0 (<1×10?18 eV), which means that when the theories are correct is zero, and that the most advanced equipment has correctly established its weight at less than 1×10?18 eV. The reason light is captured by black holes is not because of light's mass, but because the black hole's mass curves the space around itself and thereby causing light to travel towards it.

« Last Edit: July 16, 2010, 07:03:01 PM by Str82Hell »

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Quote from: George Bernard Shaw

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one

I understand what you're saying but I don't understand how that's correctMind explaining it to me?

An object travelling at c with respect to us would be shortened along the vector parallel to its velocity by 100% - a sphere would essentially be a disc, from our perspective. Similarly, from the object's perspective, the rest of the universe would be shortened along the same vector, and thus would not appear to have any forward distance to travel through. From the perspective of the object, the entire universe would be traversed in literally no time at all.

At low speeds, the (v^2/c^2) term is practically zero so t' is very close to tAt one half c t' = t/ 0.5 so it take 2 ticks of the observers clock for the moving clock to tick once.As you approach c, the number of clock ticks on the observers clock per one tick of the movingclock approaches infinity. Basically, we see time stopped for moving observers.

We really observe this... in particle accelerators we produce particles with very shorthalf-lives, but from the labs reference frame, they stick around longer the fasterthey are moving. We also need to make this correction for GPS satellites.

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If we are honest—and scientists have to be—we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. — Paul Dirac

^^ All true. I figured that length-contraction would express the idea more graphically, which is why I went with that (after deleting my post on time-dilation halfway through).

To this day, I think the closest thing I have had to a religious experiencewas back in high school when I first derived time dilation, length contraction,mass expansion, and mass-energy equivalence for the first time. (with some nudges in the right direction from my physics teacher).

It was a shocking realization that anyone could take a couple of basic ideas and really understand amazing things about the world.

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If we are honest—and scientists have to be—we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. — Paul Dirac

To this day, I think the closest thing I have had to a religious experiencewas back in high school when I first derived time dilation, length contraction,mass expansion, and mass-energy equivalence for the first time. (with some nudges in the right direction from my physics teacher).

It was a shocking realization that anyone could take a couple of basic ideas and really understand amazing things about the world.

I had exactly the same experience, although it was in college, not high school. Special relativity could have been derived several hundred years before Einstein if the speed of light had been determined to be constant.

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I stopped believing for a little while this morning. Journey is gonna be so pissed when they find out...

"That which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe."- John Archibald Wheeler

MWI removes the observer-dependent role in the quantum measurement process by replacing wavefunction collapse with quantum decoherence. Since the role of the observer lies at the heart of most if not all "quantum paradoxes," this automatically resolves a number of problems; see for example Schrödinger's cat thought-experiment, the EPR paradox, von Neumann's "boundary problem" and even wave-particle duality. Quantum cosmology also becomes intelligible, since there is no need anymore for an observer outside of the universe.

MWI is realist, deterministic, local theory, akin to classical physics (including the theory of relativity), at the expense of losing counterfactual definiteness. MWI achieves this by removing wavefunction collapse, which is indeterministic and non-local, from the deterministic and local equations of quantum theory.[45][46]

MWI (or other, broader multiverse considerations) provides a context for the anthropic principle which may provide an explanation for the fine-tuned universe.[47][48]

MWI, being a decoherent formulation, is axiomatically more streamlined than the Copenhagen and other collapse interpretations; and thus favoured under certain interpretations of Ockham's razor.[49] Of course there are other decoherent interpretations that also possess this advantage with respect to the collapse interpretations.

Yes, in a general way but I find it unsatisfying. To me it explains observation and it's relation to the coherence of a single universe by conjuring an observerless, decoherent, multi-universe. I'm not sure what interpretation of Ockham's razor they are talking about, but to me MWI is egregiously unparsimonious. Not to say that I think it's impossible, just that I still like my interpretation better

It makes sense to me that there is an observer effect because all observers and phenomena they observe are made of the same basic thing - atoms. They share the same atomic properties, the same atomic language. If you put the math behind your eye instead of in front of it, there isn't an observer effect, there is just observation - no flying photons, just an illuminated retina.

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"That which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe."- John Archibald Wheeler

Hence, the promotion of your interpretation of QM is a statement about you - and what satisfies you - rather than about QM.

If my interpretation of QM is a statement about me, the the MWI interpretation of QM is a statement about Bryce DeWitt. I prefer mine.

What is your promotion of your interpretation of my satisfactions a statement of? Evidence of an egoless vessel of scientific impartiality which you speak for?

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"That which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe."- John Archibald Wheeler

Hence, the promotion of your interpretation of QM is a statement about you - and what satisfies you - rather than about QM.

If my interpretation of QM is a statement about me, the the MWI interpretation of QM is a statement about Bryce DeWitt. I prefer mine.

No, your interpretation of QM is not a statement about you. I didn't say it was. I said something different. Why did you respond to something I did not say, instead of responding to something that I did say?

Why did you respond to something I did not say, instead of responding to something that I did say?

Because my interpretation of what you said is different than what yours is.

What you said sounds to me like I'm not allowed to express an interpretation QM, and that if I do, and if I find it more satisfying than other interpretations I've understood, that it's a 'statement about me - and what satisfies me'.

So you are saying that it's not my opinions of QM interpretations that bother you but that my promotion of my own (I guess because I say I like it?) disqualifies me personally somehow.

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"That which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe."- John Archibald Wheeler